It is not credible to claim that scientists are somehow immune to the biases that afflict everyone else. Fortunately, the objectivity of scientific knowledge does not depend on the objectivity of individual scientists.
Rather it depends on strategies for identifying, acknowledging and correcting bias and error. As I point out in my book, Why Trust Science , scientific knowledge begins as claims advanced by individual scientists, teams or laboratories that are then closely scrutinized by others, who may bring forward additional proof to sustain them—or to modify or reject them.
What emerges as a scientific fact or established theory is rarely if ever the same as the starting claim; it has been adjusted in light of evidence and argumentation. Science is a collective effort, and it works best when scientific communities are diverse.
The reason is simple: heterogeneous communities are more likely than homogeneous ones to be able to identify blind spots and correct them.
Science does not correct itself; scientists correct one another through critical interrogation. And that means being willing to interrogate not just claims about the external world but claims about our own practices and processes as well. Science has an admirable record of producing reliable knowledge about the natural and social world, but not when it comes to acknowledging its own weaknesses.
And we cannot correct those weaknesses if we insist the system will magically correct itself. It is not ideological to acknowledge and confront bias in science; it is ideological to insist science cannot be biased despite empirical validation to the contrary.
Given that our failings of inclusion have been known for a long time, it is high time we finally fix them. This article was originally published with the title "Sexism and Racism Persist in Science" in Scientific American , 4, 81 October Naomi Oreskes is a professor of the history of science at Harvard University.
Although these outdated views were rejected over time, Black women still face the potent remnants of this historical narrative that devalued their status as women and as workers. Black women frequently encounter a workplace narrative that deemphasizes the importance of their personal caregiving responsibilities or suggests that their caregiving roles should be secondary to their paid work. This narrative has historical roots dating back to the era of slavery, when Black women faced sexual violence and exploitation to produce free labor without rights to their children.
Yet, today, Black women disproportionately work in caregiving jobs, and Black mothers with young children have the highest labor force participation rates among all mothers. Black pregnant workers , for example, who are denied accommodations such as additional water breaks or access to light duty positions may have to choose between jeopardizing their health or losing their job. Moreover, this traditional preference in favor of paid work also reflects the historically male-centered view of work that obscures a more holistic perspective about how work should be valued.
Unpaid work in the home—which, in most cases, is performed primarily by women —is frequently ignored but increasingly important to families. While women overall work fewer paid work hours than men, they spend more time than men doing unpaid work around the home and caring for children. On top of these responsibilities, Black women are the most likely among all women to spend the most time continuing to do paid work.
The skepticism about the importance of caregiving responsibilities means that Black women may face a wage penalty when trying to be more responsive to their work and family roles. While Black women have moved into more diverse fields over the years, they have also faced extensive occupational segregation , meaning they are concentrated in jobs that pay lower wages with limited mobility.
Even when they have moved into jobs traditionally held by men or white workers and moved up the career ladder into managerial or leadership roles, Black women often encounter resistance because they are not perceived as fitting the traditional, typically male standard of success. Too often, the public narrative about women has focused primarily on the experiences of white women as opposed to those of Black women and other women of color. The lack of intersectional analysis can result in an incomplete picture that excludes crucial perspectives and gives little attention to why disparities, such as those between white women and Black women, in earnings, advancement opportunities, unemployment rates, and other areas continue to persist.
They also reveal how discrimination and stereotypes become entrenched in workplace structures and practices. In order to secure equal pay for Black women, policymakers must focus on the range of actions needed to respond directly to the race and gender biases that affect wages.
This means providing Black women with stronger legal protections and better information about pay practices, promoting greater transparency and accountability, and identifying new tools to target discrimination, including:. To be effective, equal pay measures must focus on pursuing new strategies and reforms that acknowledge and tackle these problems head-on.
Black women deserve more than one day of recognition about the pay gap. They deserve concrete action steps that prioritize fair pay and economic stability for themselves and their families. Jocelyn Frye , Michele L. Sarah Jane Glynn , Katie Hamm. Kaitlin Holmes , Danielle Corley. Colin Seeberger Director, Media Relations. Peter Gordon Director, Government Affairs. While Black women doctors encountered persistent, daily gender biases that occurred in the context of structural, racialized barriers—both of which made advancement in the profession difficult—Black women nurses reported few instances with gender biases and instead described routine, frequent, and explicitly racist encounters with colleagues.
Nurses were not employed in a culturally masculinized space like Black doctors, but in the absence of overt gender bias, they dealt with racist interactions with white coworkers. Melinda, a nurse who primarily tended to new mothers in the postpartum unit of a hospital, recounted one such interaction with a colleague. And these experiences still varied from those of Black women technicians, who did not describe overt, explicitly gendered biases in their work.
Rather, they described friction with mostly white women nurses who, stressed out by policies that encouraged overwork and emboldened by a lack of organizational restraint, assigned them extra work that was not delegated to white colleagues.
Thus, even in spaces where Black workers are underrepresented, it is critical not to assume that they all share common experiences. These intersecting factors help highlight some of the common challenges Black women workers encounter, but they also underscore that policies designed to improve gender parity in workplaces will not be successful if they ignore the ways that the issues women face in the workplace are also shaped by race, as well as other factors—citizenship, occupational status, sexual identity, and more.
This also applies to companies that profess their commitment to achieving racial equity and state their opposition to systemic racism, as many are now doing in the wake of national protests against racial inequality.
It remains to be seen whether these companies will take the long-term, sustained, comprehensive actions that would be necessary to make the changes they now say they wish to see. The good news is that there is some research that documents ways that organizations—both in health care and in other industries—can become more equitable. Changing hiring practices so that organizations pair with institutions that are known for training workers of color is a first step.
For instance, universities like Meharry Medical College and Xavier University in New Orleans produce a disproportionate number of Black students who go on to become physicians. Organizations can partner with places like these that are renowned for training skilled Black workers. Additionally, collecting data to understand what challenges and obstacles their employees are facing, particularly those from underrepresented groups, is important as well.
Companies can also directly involve managers in developing solutions, rather than tinkering around the edges of existing policies. Organizations can also enact paid leave for all workers—or better yet, lobby for federal policies ensuring paid sick and parental leave policies, so that these policies are available to all workers regardless of their place of employment.
And companies can change aspects of their culture that allow sexual harassment to flourish, since, as the MeToo movement has shown us, this is a major problem for many vulnerable workers in virtually every industry.
Ultimately, race and gender continue to matter in complicated, intersecting ways for women workers today. While the U.
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